


Touch and Go

by LadySilver



Series: Strength to Go On [4]
Category: The Listener (TV)
Genre: Gen, H/C bingo, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-08
Updated: 2012-08-08
Packaged: 2017-11-11 16:58:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/480775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadySilver/pseuds/LadySilver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Olivia loses a patient in surgery, she goes to Toby for comfort.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Touch and Go

**Author's Note:**

> For h/c bingo prompt: surgery

“It wasn’t your fault,” Toby spoke. He glanced at Olivia out of the corner of his eye, then went back to watching his fingers twist together while he waited for a response to his transgression. He’d been changing out of his paramedic’s uniform when she showed up at his door, so he’d hastily thrown on a pair of beleaguered gray sweats, the distress from her day announcing her presence before the doorbell did, and now he felt both underdressed and worried that she would take his outfit the wrong way and cut their time together short, especially now that he’d violated the one rule of their tentative new friendship—no mindreading.

 _Yes, it was,_ Olivia thought. She traced a finger around the base of the wineglass that sat on the coffee table in front of her, her jaw working silently. Her black hair was pulled into a sloppy bun and her eyes were puffy with exhaustion and suppressed tears. “It was an amateur mistake,” Olivia replied, instead. “I shouldn’t have—I wasn’t—“ She shook her head, and traced again the wineglass that she hadn’t brought to her lips even once since arriving at Toby’s apartment.

A visual came through next, of Olivia standing over the patient with her scalpel ready, bringing the knife down for the next, delicate cut, and her hand convulsing as if an electric charge had ripped through her body. Toby’s telepathy was far from perfect, and he often had difficulty assessing whether what he saw really happened or not, but this time he came down solidly on the side of “or not.” 

“It was an accident, Liv,” he assured her; that much he was certain of. Olivia was a skilled and talented surgeon with years of experience. She lost patients from time to time—every doctor did, sometimes for no good reason at all—but this one had struck her the hardest of any. “You did everything you could.”

Olivia snorted softly. “Did I?” she asked. Two small words and they were so loaded with blame and doubt that Toby briefly wondered if his talent had widened to picking up emotions as well as thoughts. She leaned toward him; Toby wrapped an arm around her shoulder, pulling her even closer.

“You did. I know you did. Accidents happen to everyone—“

“Doctors don’t get to make mistakes,” she interrupted. “I screwed up, and it cost a patient his life.” She dropped her shoulders in defeat. _I’m going to be sued,_ she thought. _I’m going to lose my license. What else do I have if I can’t be a doctor anymore?_

The force of her thoughts hit him so hard that Toby reeled back, gritting his teeth. He dimly heard a grunt of pain escape.

“Toby?” Olivia asked.

He shook his head, offered a tight smile. “Trust me on this one, Liv,” he said. “You did everything you could.

“Were you…?” She pointed to her head and raised her eyebrows meaningfully.

Toby grimaced. “Sorry,” he replied, laying bare his abashment at not being able to block her. It was only fair, since Liv couldn’t read him back and he’d promised to never hide his thoughts from her.

Her face momentarily crumpled, her arms crossing defensively. Just as quickly, she opened back up. “You know what?” She turned on the couch, coming to face him more fully. “Maybe this is a good thing. Can you read me for real and see what I did wrong?”

“All right,” Toby murmured, not agreeing, but pondering the request. “All right, OK.” He chewed on his lip, not because he didn’t trust that Olivia knew what she wanted, but because of the potential cost.

“It’s OK,” Olivia said, resting a hand gently on his forearm. “I’m giving permission. I know you might ‘see’ more than… is good, but I need to know.”

“My ability’s not perfect,” Toby reminded her. She knew that; she’d heard him remind people of his ability’s limitations often enough—which didn’t mean she really understood them. No one could, even when they thought they did.

She nodded, wiping at her eyes, a relief in her expression that he never thought he’d see. “So, how does this work?”

He drew a deep breath, let it out. “Just do your best to remember. You don’t need to try to organize your thoughts or put them into words or anything. Just think about what happened.”

For a second she looked like she was going to change her mind, and he was prepared to let her, to go back to their glasses of wine and the kind of physical-presence comfort she had come to him for, without a comment. They’d never be romantic interests again, but he wouldn’t do anything to sacrifice their friendship.

Olivia sat up straight, smoothing her hands down her slacks as if about to conduct a professional interview. “OK, I’m ready.”

A beat passed, and then her thoughts were laid open for him. They came in disjointed flashes, as always, but this time without Olivia’s self-recrimination distorting the memory. She was an analytical thinker and a trained observer, and her thoughts were clearer than Toby was used to dealing with. As the input wrapped up, he blinked rapidly, bringing his attention back to the world in front of him. He rubbed gently at his temple to quell the mild disassociation that came with mind reading.

He’d seen the surgery, seen Olivia’s careful and practiced cuts. There was no jump this time, no shock. Olivia's knife slipped, a simple, unavoidable mistake. A millimeter either direction, and the nick would have been little more than an inconvenience. Combined with the severity of the patient's other wounds, though, the new injury was too much.

“All right,” Toby said. Olivia’s expression knotted with worry, and he reached out to clasp her hands in his. “It’s just like I said: you did everything you could.”

“I let a man die,” she argued.

“You might not have been able to save him anyway,” he responded. “Yeah, you made a mistake, but…” He shook his head. “Liv, you did the best you could.”

“Did I?”

“Yes. Completely.”

Once again, her head dropped, only this time in acceptance rather than regret. “You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?”

Toby mock-flinched, as if offended. “I promised,” he reminded her.

“I know,” she replied, a note of exasperation creeping into her voice. “It’s just … it never gets easier to lose a patient.” Before he could chime in, tell her what she already knew about how it wasn’t supposed to get easier, he heard _but it does get easier to go back to work after it happens, doesn’t it, Toby?_

Toby smiled. “Yeah. Yeah, it does.”

Giving his hands a light squeeze, Olivia said, “Thank you.” _Now get out of my head._

“Any time, Liv. You know that,” Toby answered, pretending he hadn’t heard the second part. And because he’d helped her, Olivia let him get away with it.


End file.
